As the Jewish holiday of Passover approaches, extremist clerics increase their incursions into the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, amid calls and encouragement from activists of the "Return to the Temple" movement to offer their offerings in the third holiest mosque for Muslims after the Meccan and Civil Mosques, in flagrant violation of the status quo, and in a scene that has become repeated year after year since 2021.
French newspaper Libération said Passover had been on Ramadan two years ago, prompting Israeli police to increase their procedures around the venue, at a time when Palestinians stepped up their presence amid fears of attempts by Jewish fundamentalists to offer their offerings in the mosque grounds.
This coincides with activists from the "Return to the Temple" movement calling on its members to bring their offerings and slaughter them in the square, which prompted hundreds of worshipers to gather at the tribal mosque for fear that extremists would take advantage of the morning hours to desecrate the mosque, and police intervened with sound bombs, rubber bullet launchers and batons, and arrested hundreds of young men before releasing most of them in the morning.
The newspaper pointed out – in a report by its correspondent in Jerusalem Samuel Faury – that the Islamic Waqf Department believes that Israel is gradually working to break the status quo at Al-Aqsa, and that Palestinians demonstrating against extremist Jewish groups entering the mosque are right and that the Israeli police are not authorized to expel them, but rather the duty is to prevent these extremist groups that are working to build a synagogue and destroy the mosque from reaching the compound.
According to the correspondent, the intervention of the Israeli police did not pass peacefully, as Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired about 15 shells from Gaza towards its surroundings, and a rocket landed in a packing factory, in a reaction reminiscent of the escalation in May 2021, after a violent intervention by Israeli security forces that injured 500 people while evacuating the square at the end of Ramadan, followed by an 11-day military campaign.
Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri said that the Israeli aggression against worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque was a heinous crime, and that "the Palestinian people and the resistance forces will respond with all their might."